


Born asleep

by KaylenaKey



Category: 9-1-1: Lone Star (TV 2020)
Genre: Labour pain, M/M, Mild Smut, Nervousness, Pregnancy, Pregnancy Scares, Premature Birth, Worry, contractions, how are none of these tags?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 15:49:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29886885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaylenaKey/pseuds/KaylenaKey
Summary: A distraught Owen shows up at Carlos' condo after Gwen went into labour early.T.K. tries to stay calm and collected while imagining the worst.(No, this is not a Owen/Gwen story, don't worry!)
Relationships: Carlos Reyes/TK Strand, Gwyneth Strand/Owen Strand
Comments: 8
Kudos: 43





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So... the last episode was interesting.. not what I expected, but also not surprising!?
> 
> Well, I had already started writing this story before the episode aired, so Gwen didn't cheat in this fic and the baby is actually Owens.
> 
> I hope my english is okay, and enjoy :)

T.K. and Carlos were at Carlos' place when it happened.  
They were laying in bed, naked bodies meeting in all the right places. Carlos was sucking on his boyfriend's neck as he thrusted into him continually.

T.K. was so lost in the feeling, he barely registered the loud knock on the front door of the condo. Carlos seemed to have the same problem, at least neither of them made a move to get up.

They tried to ignore it, but when another fit of obnoxiously loud knocking reverberated through the place, they got pissed.

A moment later, they heard the muffled voice of Owen Strand.

"T.K., Carlos? You here? I need to talk to you!"

T.K. was in no mood to talk to his father while being this intimate with his boyfriend. Not after not being able to do so for almost _two weeks_ because of Carlos' unfortunate series of night shifts. So he just mumbled a simple "Ignore it. I'll call him later" before he pushed Carlos' body down onto him again.

Carlos started kissing along T.K.'s shoulder. But Owen obviously wasn't done yet, still standing in front of the locked door.

"It's your mother, she's ...in the hospital."

Owen's voice grew quieter at the last three words, almost too quiet for them to understand, but T.K. heard. And suddenly, he froze.

Carlos stopped immediately, climbing off of him. T.K. wasted no second in jumping out of bed, grabbing the bath robe from the bathroom door and putting it on while running down the stairs.

The moment he threw the front door open, he breathed a concerned "What happened?"

Owen, who had already stepped away from the porch, thinking nobody was home, walked back to the door. He couldn't miss how disheveled both of them looked, his son in a bath gown and the officer only wearing his boxer briefs. Still, he didn't mention it. There were more important things right now than teasing his son about his sex life.

"She called 9-1-1 after experiencing strong contractions and they picked her up and drove her to the hospital. That's all I know."

"Contractions? No, how's that possible, she's only six months in, it's too early!"

T.K. thought his dad was kidding. Or maybe his mom just _thought_ it were labour pains. She probably just freaked over nothing!

He tried to stay calm.

"The doctor had informed us that premature births aren't uncommon when the woman is older than 40. So it is possible", Owen said and it didn't make T.K. feel any better.

He needed some hope. "But... she'll be fine, right?"

Carlos noticed how frightened his boyfriend looked and took him into his arms.

"I'm sure she will be", Owen tried to reassure him, but it did little to calm his nerves. "I'm driving there now, do you wanna come?"

Now that was a ridiculous question. Did he want to go to the hospital to check if his mother was alright after finding out she's probably about to deliver a baby three months early?

YES!

Still, as much as he might have wanted, he didn't snap at his father. Instead he said: "Yeah, sure. Just let me get dressed real quick."

With that, he was gone, leaving Owen with Carlos, the latter still having questions.

"Where had she been when it started?"

"I don't know. I haven't had the chance to talk to the EMT team yet. I just know that she was in a lot of pain, otherwise she wouldn't have called 9-1-1."

Carlos nodded at that, and before he could say anything reassuring for Owen to quiet the older man's deafening thoughts, a fully dressed T.K. charged down the stairs.

"You're not coming?", he asked Carlos, slightly disappointed, while walking towards his father.

"I'll catch up on you. Go."

T.K. gave him a short kiss on his cheek before he disappeared out the door.

  
Carlos didn't waste much time in getting dressed and driving to the hospital, knowing that T.K. would need him.

He was a little surprised, but also not really, when he found the whole 126 sitting in the waiting room, half of them equipped with to-go coffee already.

T.K., who was leaning on his father and giving off a lot of nervous energy, noticed Carlos and immediately started relaxing. He got up and walked towards him, collapsing into his boyfriend's arms.

"Thank you for coming", he mumbled into his shoulder, which would have made Carlos chuckle in a different situation. T.K. should know by now that Carlos would be with him in a heartbeat, no matter what the reason was. He would even drop everything and sprint to him only to help him find his socks if T.K. would ask him for it!

"Of course I'm coming, Tiger! Do we know anything yet?"

Owen just shook his head. "She's still in surgery."

So, with nothing else to do, the pair sat down and waited.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy chapter 2 :)
> 
> Btw, I probably won't be that active those next few weeks because I'm in school again (things are looking good in my country rn) and have like 3 months of exams to catch up to, so I don't really have much time to write at the moment. Just so you know :)

08:23:17. 08:23:18. 08:23:19. T.K. had been staring at the clock for almost half an hour. He knew it did him no good, everyone knows that time passes by so much slower if you keep staring at it. But he found nothing else to do.  
Sipping on his coffee started annoying the others and squeezing Carlos' hand had started making the latter's hand go numb, so he had to stop eventually.

So, he stared at the clock on the wall, counting every single second as if it was the most important thing to do. But his loud thoughts convinced him of something else.

Staring at the watch told him one thing: He's been sitting on this goddamn hospital chair for two hours already, and it started to drive him crazy.

Was the doctor even allowed to stay in there so long without telling them a single detail about his mother's condition? And why was his father not allowed in there when she was having the baby? He's the father after all.

He got pulled out of his thoughts when he felt a hand on his thigh. Turning his head to his left, he found a reassuring smile on his boyfriend's face. He tried desperately to smile back, but he just couldn't.

T.K. had known of the risks. Nobody had to tell him, it came with his medical training. But he also knew his mother. Gwyneth was a strong woman who didn't give up on things easily. Otherwise she would never have managed to open her very own law firm at the age of 32.

But there are fights a human can't win. And he was scared this would be one of them.

He was also scared for the baby. While he wasn't so happy about the news in the beginning, now he just wanted to meet his baby brother. The thought of losing him without getting to know him, that thought killed him.

So much could go wrong, he realized, and he started spiraling.

Up to the point where Carlos got up and pulled him with him outside the hospital to get some fresh air and calm down again.

"You can't think like that, T.K.", he said softly, as if he had read every single thought that ran through the younger man's head in the past two hours.

"I can't _stop_ thinking about it! So much could go wrong!", T.K. said, finally giving his thoughts a voice.

Carlos pulled him into a hug, making him relax for the first time since his father's knocking earlier that day.

"That's true, but don't make assumptions about it. Nothing we heard so far implied that she or the baby are in danger. So try not to think too much into it, okay?"

T.K. nodded, taking a deep breath, slowly relaxing into his boyfriend's arms.

  
They stayed outside for a while, enjoying the cool Texas night air, before returning to the aggressively white walls of the hospital waiting room. Nothing about the room was calming. There weren't even pictures hung up on the walls. It was a disgustingly plain room, the only color brought in by the dark-violet chairs.

After 30 minutes, the doctor finally made an appearance. Everyone got up, looking at him expectantly.

Owen and T.K. stepped forward, waiting for him to talk.

"Mr. Strand. I'm the doctor taking care of your ex-wife. My name's Dr. Hall. So, to her status..." The doctor started to skim through the file. "She was brought in at 6:35 pm with strong labour pains. We gave her some mild pain killers and checked on the baby. It had a little oxygen shortage but other than that it was fine. But she indeed is going into labour and the baby will be coming tonight. There had been some complications earlier but we got it under control now. I think she will be just fine, but I am - and I can't keep this from you, as much as I hate saying it - I am concerned about the well-being of the baby. We don't know if he will survive the birth."

T.K. felt the air being sucked out of his lungs. He might never get the chance to meet his brother.

The doctor tried to make the situation better and gave a ridiculous "But let's not assume the worst" before stepping out of the room.

Another hour went by, and T.K. felt being on the edge of losing his mind.

So he literally jumped out of the chair the second he saw the doctor heading their way again. Dr. Hall's expression was vacant. Not the face a doctor would make to tell a family that a healthy baby was born.

He prepared for the worst. But how do you prepare for the possibility of losing your mother and/or your baby brother?

The doctor stepped into the room, studied all of them for a second as if he wanted to observe the moment their concern shattered into grief.

With a last readjusting of his glasses, he opened his mouth and spoke: "I'm sorry to inform you that neither Mrs. Morgan, nor the baby made it."

  
For a minute, everything was quiet. Deafeningly quiet.

Then, it was too loud. The ringing in his ears growing louder by the minute.

T.K. couldn't think, he couldn't move. His worst fear became reality, and all he wanted to do was wake up and realize that it's all been a really bad dream.

But it felt too realistic to be a dream.

It made sense, and that was the worst!

It made sense that his almost 50 years old mother would die while delivering her baby, and it made sense for the three-months-too-early baby to not make it either.

He had known the risks from the beginning, but nothing could have prepared him for this moment.

While Owen sank into his chair again, hands coming up to cover his face, Carlos came up to T.K. to take him into his arms for the third time that night, this time not planning on letting go that fast.

In the back you could hear Grace praying quietly, but the prayer had changed. While she had been praying for Gwen and the baby to go through this delivery safely the past three hours, now she prayed for them to make it to heaven easily.

Judd held her hand through her prayer, having his eyes closed and head hung low.

"You can go see them, if you want", the doctor offered after he had given them a few minutes.

T.K. and Owen looked up at him, considering if they were ready for it.

T.K. turned in Carlos' arms to look at him and asked between sobs: "Will you come with me?"

"Of course. If that's what you want."

He nodded, feeling a little better at Carlos' calm voice, before the three of them followed the doctor.

  
Holding his baby brother in his arms for the first time should not be a sad moment. It was supposed to be filled with happiness at seeing the new-born look up at him, or sleeping, whatever he preferred. He wasn't supposed to be sleeping forever, without having seen the world at all. Maybe if he had, he would have tried to stay, knowing that he had a family waiting for him.

Still, it didn't look like he was dead. It also didn't look like his mother was dead. They were just ...sleeping. Without breathing. And without a heartbeat.

"We still need to name him, dad."

"Your mother wanted to name him Rory Jarrett", Owen said. And as wrong as it felt, T.K. had to chuckle.

He looked up at his dad, disbelief in his voice as he asked: "Rory Jarrett? You guys are really going out of your way for those names, huh?"

Owen let out a little laugh himself, before it turned into a painful sob as the harsh realization finally catched up on him.

T.K. looked down at the baby in his arms and whispered: "I hope you enjoy being an angel, R.J."  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, at least now we know what R.J. stands for, right? 😅
> 
> Thank you guys so much for reading :)
> 
> I hope I'll see you soon!

**Author's Note:**

> This will have a second chapter, which will probably be out tomorrow.
> 
> Thanks for reading, have a nice day/night :)


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